“If young John doesn’t float up into the rafters, ’twill be a marvel,” said Lady Eleanor, reappearing at Gunnar’s side.
He watched the lad wince as he pushed to his feet, favoring the leg Tunstall had struck. “He’s too sore to fly. He earned every grain of that gold, twice over.”
“He had good aide, I think. My lady mother says you disarmed Tunstall, though I did not see it myself. She wishes me to present you before we sup.” She leaned close, brushing his arm as she whispered, “She does not yet know who you are. Come, we must stand aside.”
With the dais clear, a throng of servants rushed forward to produce the high table, drape it in yard upon yard of white linen, and set it with gleaming plate.
As the earl and his lady at last stepped forward to take their chairs, Eleanor turned to Gunnar. “Are you ready,
monsire
? My lord father can be . . . formidable.”
“No more so than his daughter.” Gunnar offered his hand. “I believe I have courage enough for both of you.”
Smiling, she curled her fingers over his offered fist and firmly steered him toward the high table. As they approached, Westmorland turned. “Who is this champion who claimed such a chaste kiss, daughter?”
“Truly a champion, my lord, and a man I have long wanted you to meet. I give you Sir Gunnar of Lesbury. The knight who saved us from the fire.”
“At Richmond?” Lord Ralph came up out of his chair to grasp Gunnar by the hand. “Welcome, Sir Gunnar, welcome at last.”
“Eleanor! You should have told me,” scolded the countess.
“I only discovered him during the mêlée, my lady. And it would not have been seemly during the award.”
“Then
you
should have told us,
monsire
.” The countess beamed up from her chair. “Why did you not announce yourself? You have been in my prayers every day since York sent word of how a brave stranger saved my daughter.”
Gunnar shifted uneasily. “I did only what any man would do.”
“No other man rescued her.”
“Only because I reached the bower first, my lady. If I had not, another would have stepped forward.”
“No, they would not,” said Lady Eleanor. “I would have died in the flames if not for you, and Lucy with me. And you know it well. Now come, I can at last have you beside me at table.”
She turned toward the long second table where the champions and their ladies were taking their places, but Lord Ralph stopped her. “Here at the high table, Eleanor. Your Sir Gunnar is a most honored guest in this household.”
Servants scrambled to set a fresh place, and Gunnar soon found himself sharing a bench with Lady Eleanor. As she exchanged a few words of greeting with the lord and lady to her right, he took advantage of the moment to study her, comparing the maid beside him to the girl in his mind.
It wasn’t simply the height and the full teats that were different: her face had changed as well, losing the blandness of childhood to become both strikingly female and uncommonly bold. She clearly took after her father: his high cheekbones and noble nose gave her face enough strength to balance a full mouth that fell just shy of being too wide. Beneath brows that flew off aslant like a blackbird’s wings, her pale gray eyes—the only feature she seemed to have stolen from her mother—glowed from amid lashes so dark he suspected she might dust them with coal.
And that hair: still as bone-straight and glossy as he remembered on that girl by the hearth, but now caught back in an intricate net of braids that hung well past her buttocks, thick as his wrist.
Thank the gods her hair wasn’t hidden away beneath a crespin or one of those bizarre horned arrangements that were the mark of married women these days. The braids meant she was still unwed. Hope surged through him once more at the thought; he pushed it down, still unwilling to give himself over to it.
And then the first courses were carried out, and he was saved, the lady all but forgotten as the aromas of onions, saffron, cloves, and freshly baked bread washed over him. His stomach rumbled like an oxcart on cobblestones, audible even over the music drifting down from the minstrels’ gallery at the end of the hall.
Lady Eleanor averted her gaze, pretending not to hear, but Gunnar caught a snort of, what? Laughter? Disapproval? It used to be that a rumbling belly was the sign of a good appetite, just as a hearty belch after a meal was a sign that the food had satisfied, but now, and at a noble table . . . He supposed he needed to apologize.
He leaned close so he could keep his words private. “Your pardon, my lady. I have yet to learn how to still an empty belly.”
“You have not eaten today?”
“I was traveling.” That wasn’t quite true; the bull had spent the day grazing, but that hardly counted.
“And then you fought, unfed? You must be starved.” She motioned over the nearest serving man, who began spooning a savory soup of veal and onions over slices of toasted bread in a bowl. Gunnar picked up a spoon and dug in. He was nearly through the bowl when the meat was carried in.
Not just any meat. Roasted pig, crisp skin dripping with fat. Aye, just what he’d longed for, that and the custard, yellow with eggs and glistening with cream. As a boy passed by with a huge bowl of the stuff, he felt like leaping in. It was all he could do not to groan.
Lady Eleanor must have noted the food-lust in his eyes, for she saw to it that their trencher was piled with the richest dishes on the table, then held back as he ate his fill, pointing out choice morsels, buttering bread for him, and gently encouraging him to stuff himself. He obliged, and most happily.
As they shared a piece of the honey cake that finished the meal, the lord to their left, whose name Gunnar had already forgotten, leaned over.
“Your pardon, sir. Did I hear it said that you saved Lady Eleanor, here, from a fire?”
It was as though the lady had been waiting all these years for someone to ask. Before Gunnar could gather his words, she raced into her version of the events at Richmond. She was a lively if inaccurate storyteller, and soon everyone within hearing was caught up in her tale as she painted him a hero, her hands fluttering and swooping with her words.
Gunnar sat quietly, willing everyone to watch her and forget him. And it worked, too, until her tale ventured so far from the truth that it made him wince.
“What is it, Sir Gunnar?” asked Lord Ralph—probably the only man within hearing not enthralled by his daughter and her tale. “Does Eleanor have it wrong?”
“I would not dare call her wrong, my lord,” said Gunnar carefully. “But she does . . . beribbon things.”
“Beribbon.” Chuckling with the others, Lord Ralph rose and came over to stand behind Eleanor, laying a hand on each shoulder. “A good name for her way. I have heard her ‘beribbon’ a story until it fell over from the weight of all the trimmings. Where did she go astray?”
“I did not soar off the balcony like an eagle, my lord. I fell off it like a sack of stones, all but killing us both.”
“You told me you leapt,” protested Lady Eleanor over the laughter. “That very night.”
“You said leapt, my lady. I said fell, even then.”
“How strange you so easily recall what you said when you struggled to recall me,” she said tartly, shrugging off her father’s hands. “I say we could not have fallen. I had barely a bruise.”
“You told me that night that you ached, my lady,” reminded Gunnar, laughing himself now. “And I know I did.”
“Whatever aches you felt, they were surely less than the sting of your burns. Your very shirt was—”
“Aaah.”
“Almost burned off y—” The groan carried Lady Eleanor to her feet mid-word. “
Madame
?”
“Joan?” Lord Ralph hurried back to kneel at his wife’s side. They exchanged a few hushed words, and then he rose to scold her. “You should have told me, instead of trying to outlast both mêlée and meal. And
I
should have noticed. It isn’t as though I haven’t seen this before. Mary, Eleanor, the rest of you. Come, it is time. Someone fetch the midwife.”
A page dashed toward the door, and Eleanor started toward her mother. She’d gone only a few steps when she stopped and turned back. “Forgive me, Sir Gunnar, but I am needed. You will still be here on the morrow, I hope.”
Yes, he wanted to say, but it wasn’t possible. He needed to see to Jafri’s safety before he could deal with anything else. “I fear not, my lady. I have business to attend, but—”
“Not again! But I have a gift for you, and I cannot give it now.” She glanced anxiously toward where her sisters and the other women surrounded her mother.
And that’s when he saw it, the silver comb that caught her braid at the nape of her neck. He’d noticed it before, but now the light caught it just right, raising the image engraved into the wide spine: a maiden sitting on the back of a bull.
His heart stuttered in his chest, then started pounding like a fuller’s stock, so loud he barely heard her say,
“You must come back.”
Of course he must.
He swallowed hard, trying to find his voice. “I will. As soon as I am able.”
“I have heard that promise before.” She balled her fists on her hips and faced him like a stubborn alewife. “What surety do I have that you tell the truth this time, so that I may attend my mother’s labors without worrying that another five years will pass before I see you?”
“None but my word, but I give it freely. I will be back.”
“When?”
He quickly calculated how much time it would take to do what needed to be done and get back to her, then held up a finger. “One week.”
“And you swear it?”
“Of a certs, my lady. How can I not, when it is Providence?”
She gave him a smile so brilliant he felt its warmth in the pit of his stomach. “I believe you will,” she said quietly, then whirled and hurried off after her mother.
Gunnar watched, bemused, until she vanished with the others down a passageway, then carried his cup of wine over to the hearth. The men already there made way for him, shuffling back to let him pass, to give him the best seat, to defer to him. Not good, whispered the part of him that demanded to stay hidden, but any chance of that had vanished. Consoling himself with the thought that most of those present were there for the tourney and would scatter before he returned, he took the offered seat, stretched his feet toward the fire, and settled in for an evening’s company.
Only later, when the hall was dark and rattling with snores, did he have the peace he needed to try to wrap his mind around what had happened.
Of all the places he might have chosen to lay his head this night, he had been drawn here, to her. And of all the favors he could have chosen, he’d been drawn to
her
glove. It had beckoned him from the first, and even when he failed to find it, fortune conspired to put it into his hands. He’d been led to her in spite of himself.
He’d suspected it from the moment he’d realized who she was, but hadn’t dared hope it was true. Now, he had no doubt, not after seeing the maid and bull.
Providence
, she’d called it, using her Christian word. But he knew the truth: it was the
Nornir
, the Fate-spinners, who had woven their life-strands together. He might have been too dull-witted to see it when they’d set her in his path four years ago, but he could not mistake it now, not when she wore the confirming sign on her very body.
Glancing around to make certain the others truly slept, Gunnar rose and approached the fire to spill a measure of wine into the dying flames. As the coals hissed, he whispered a word of thanks to be carried aloft by the sweet, rising steam, the first of what he knew would be many such offerings.
For the gods had brought a gift to him, a boon for staying faithful to them through the long centuries. They’d given him a prize more valuable than any golden apple, indeed, more precious than all the gold in England: Lady Eleanor de Neville. The woman who could love him, even knowing what he was.
The woman who could save him and, in saving him, lead him to the life—and in time, the death—he so much desired.
He had much to be thankful for.
CHAPTER 5
“PUT THAT CHILD
down. You hold him more than the wet nurse does.”
“Forgive me,
madame
. I did not mean to wake you.” Eleanor turned from the window, cuddling her new brother. “Edward was fretting and I thought to settle him. Look, he smiles at me.” She tilted him slightly so her mother could see.
“Week-old babes do not smile. He has wind. Where is the wet nurse?”
“Below, suckling her own son.”
“She is supposed to do that while Edward sleeps.”
“He was sleeping. As were you. As you both still should be.”
“It appears we have both slept enough for now.” Lady Joan sat up and wrestled her pillows into shape before she eased back. “Did I dream it, or wasn’t Mary here before?”